Lakhimpur Kheri (Uttar Pradesh):
The Crime Branch of the Uttar Pradesh CID will today submit its report on the status of the investigation into the murder and alleged rape of 14-year-old Sonam in Lakhempur Kheri.
On June 15, the High Court had asked the agency to submit a report while hearing a PIL demanding a CBI probe into the incident.
Sonam was murdered last Friday, allegedly by policemen posted at the Nighaasan police station. The CB-CID report is also expected to spell out the possible motive for her murder.
The 14-year-old was found dead, tied to a tree by her dupatta at a police station in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district.
Sources in the agency said that they suspect that Sonam's killers tried to rape her before they murdered her.
Her parents - Tarranum and Intezam Ali - had also alleged that she had been raped at the Nighaasan police station. She ventured out with their cattle for grazing, they claim. When she didn't return, they went looking for her and found her propped up next to a tree. Three policemen who insisted she had committed suicide advised them to "take the body and run away."
Four policemen - Constable Ram Chandra Kumar, Sub-Inspector BK Singh, Constable Uma Shanker and Constable Shiv Kumar - have been arrested on charges of tampering of evidence. Lakhimpur Kheri's Superindent of Police, DK Rai, has been transferred.
When the first postmortem threw no light on the girl's death except to say that she had committed suicide, the UP government, under huge pressure, intervened and a second autopsy was ordered and conducted. It confirmed murder, though not rape. She was strangled and died of asyphxia, the report said.